Pond Boss Forums PHOTO GALLERY Image Gallery Male or Female??

Had aquarium given to me and it included this bluegill. Am curious - is it a male or female? Has "rounded" gill flap but also has some "black tipped" scales arranged in bars.

Male BG.

Black tipped scales arranged in bars is not a sexual characteristic for bluegills.

Most BG have bars.


Lets start with BG. Here is the preeminent thread to see about Bill , Bruce and Cecil's PB mag article.

http://www.pondboss.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=103883&fpart=1

Ewest,

To me the photo is not clear. What in the photo indicates to you it is a male?

Eric,
Please explain why you believe the pic of the fish in the above tank is a Male BG. Although the pic lacks some clarity, the documentation that you provided above (I believe) appears to contradict your choice of sex of species. The ocular flap appears to be round & short and there doesn't appear (best I can tell) to be much of any scale tipping as indicated from the brief spreadsheet above. What am I missing? Is there a certain body shape that is equivocal with regards to the sex of this species? I guess I'm too black & white in my thinking...there seems to be a grey area when it comes to sexing some species by sight description. Or maybe, in some cases....it just depends. I am just trying to educate myself.
Thanks,
Charlie

For me, there is not enough information to make a determination. There are things about the picture and description that lead me to lean to both sides of the fence.

Small opecular tab leans me to female. BUT, there are males that have that characteristic - there are subordinate males that have female characteristics so they can sneak into spawning areas and breed without being chased out by dominant male BG's.

The "black tipped scales" leans me to male.

The vertical bars could be either sex.

The darker colored breast leads me to male.

But I would not make a 100% ID on that picture and description alone.

Scale tipping , black dot on fin , coloration , blue jaw lines. I have never seen a female that looked like that.

If I were to guess, I'd go with male. Just because my gut tells me so, nothing conclusive.

Not to be contradictory but I've seen several adult female BG from some ponds in various parts of the country with an opercula flap similar to the one in Trebor's picture. Note - That picture may not be showing a real good side view of the bluegill. I wouldn't bet money on male or female from just that picture. Some strains of BG will have females with larger gill flaps and the gill flap of some males will not always be rectangular or boxy as in my pictures above as posted by ewest. When using gill flap shape to separate adult male & female BG, it is ALWAYS best to first examine numerous BG from the population you are working with to see the variability of that particular group of BG.

As noted the picture is not the best view and we don't know the length of the BG, nor its maturity. But from the picture Trebor's BG does not display much of an enlarged nape, forehead bump, or helmet of a male. Body shape is closer to that typical of female than male?

The photo is inconclusive, but the underbelly sure seems dark for a female.

See if this helps. No photo shop just cleared up.

Eric,
...well, the scale tipping is much more pronounced, as well as the black spot on the dorsal fin...maybe if the fish was not in an aquarium it'd have more color...I had a little green sunfish in a fish bowl for a month or so. It's colors never did become noticeable.
Thanks,
Charlie

In looking at that cleared up picture, I say Male.

I'm new to this, but I would go female, comparing the flap to the size of the eye. Female at 1-1.5x the size of the eye, and males 2-3x the size of the eye.

You have to look at all morphological features. I have never heard of a female with scale tipping and a black spot. Ear tabs , on the other hand are highly variable.

I've seen females with dark spots on the soft dorsal which is why we did not make that a very important or an emphasis as a sex recognition feature in our PBoss male Bluegill article. Mentioned it yes, but not a major sex character. Here is what we (Bruce, Cecil & I ) said about the caudal spot in our male BG Pond Boss magazine article: ""The spot is reduced in intensity on female bluegills. The main problem we found using the dark caudal spot is it varies in intensity among individual fish and it is not always readily visible on a wiggling and flopping fish. The caudal spot is also present on other species of sunfishes such as the green sunfish. We have found the caudal spot a variable feature and fairly unreliable in determining sex of bluegills.""

I'm not sure I would call what I can see on that poor picture as black scale tipping on the nape area. I want to see a lot more distinct black tips on the scales than in the picture above, before I conclude it is a male. I'm not sure the picture is even good enough to deserve all this discussion. If that fish was photographed at slightly a posterior angle and the gill was flared open slightly the gill flap will appear less boxy and shaped more like a female gill flap. I commonly have this problem when photographing BG when they open their gills and then the flap changes the camera angle. Also I've seen some males in specific populations (BG strains) with unusually small gill flaps such as in the fuzzy picture above. You have to admit the BG gill flap in the fuzzy picture is definitely not the same and about 1/2 as large as the one in both of ewest's BG picture posts above.